Sports bring out a lot of emotion from different people, and these emotions are captured in their rawest form in post-game interviews and press conferences. Fresh off major wins and losses, players and coaches are subject to media questions and their feelings on the game and how it was played (among others) is put into light. For this project, I’ll be analyzing post-game interviews from both players and coaches to see if there are any interesting patterns and differences between how a certain player and a certain coach show emotion after a high-pressure game.

Some Context


Just to set a scope of what the project will tackle, I’ll be analyzing the 9 NBA Finals series that LeBron James was a part of: 2007, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018. Within these series, I’ll be comparing the sentiments of the interviews held with LeBron and each of his four coaches in those seasons: Mike Brown, Erik Spoelstra, David Blatt, and Tyronn Lue.

Questions Answered

Some questions I hope to answer by the end of this project:

  1. What sentiments usually stand out in these interviews?
    Post-game interviews bring out a lot of emotion from both players and coaches. Both wins and losses trigger certain emotions that are reflected on how athletes are asked questions and how they answer. Which sentiments/emotions usually dominate these interviews?
  2. Do these sentiments vary between LeBron and his coaches?
    Both players and coaches respond differently to questions (which also vary in themselves between coaches and players). How differently do these sentiments occur between LeBron’s post-game interviews and his coaches’?
  3. Over time, do the sentiments/overall sentiment and topics of LeBron’s interviews change?
    LeBron first participated in an NBA Finals in 2007, at the age of 22. His most recent Finals trip was in 2018, at the age of 33. He participated in a total of 9 NBA Finals series over the course of his career. How much has he changed in how he approaches these post-game interviews in terms of the sentiments and the topics discussed in these interviews?
  4. How often are personal pronouns (I, me, my, mine) used over collective pronouns (us, we, our, ours)?
    Sometimes, players and coaches like to speak on behalf of the team when answering questions after games (this also depends on what and how questions are asked). I wanted to see the count of occurrences of both personal and collective pronouns.

Data and Methodology Used

For this project, I used transcript logs from ASAP Sports . This website contains a mix of pre- and post-game interviews that occurred in major sporting events (playoff games, all-star games, etc.). You can navigate to your event of choice, and eventually see a collection of links for each day of the event of your choice. Each of these links will then lead you to an interview with either a player, coach, or another important figure.

I gathered links for each relevant event and combined all outputs into one full transcript database for analysis. Analysis tools and models I used were:
1. Sentiment Analysis: Using lexicons, analyzing word count (and count of types of text), average sentiment between subgroups of data, creating word clouds and other graphs
2. Topic Modeling: Creating topic models, analyzing contents of each topic, and plotting relationship with date

The project and methodology were inspired by Matheiu Bray’s Text Analysis of NHL Hockey Coach Interviews.

Subjects for this Project

Scraping and Data Manipulation

Scraping and Data Manipulation

Scraping and Data Manipulation

Scraping Data from ASAP Sports

To scrape the data from each event (i.e. each Finals series), I first retrieved the links for each event. I then created two functions that, first, retrieved interview links (each player and coach) from each series, second, extracted relevant text from each link (interview), and lastly, placed them in one dataframe per event. I then added identifiers for easier analysis later on, and combined all datasets to create one transcript table.

get.transcripts <- function(url){
  
  urls <- read_html(url) %>% 
    html_nodes("a") %>%
    html_attr("href") # Extract the url attributes
  
  # Relevant links have the 'show_interview.php?' tag
  relevant.urls <- urls[grepl(urls,pattern="show_interview.php?",fixed=T)] 
  
  # Run text extraction function on each link
  transcripts <- rbind.fill(map(relevant.urls,extract.interview.text))
  
  return(transcripts)
}

extract.interview.text <- function(url){
  
  text <- read_html(url) %>%
    html_nodes("td") %>% 
    html_text() # Extract text
  
  # Relevant text 
  text.clean <- text[grepl(text,pattern="FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports|End of FastScripts|Аф")]
  
  # Split information into separate strings, remove whitespace at the beginning and end of each
  text.clean.split <- str_trim(str_split(text.clean,pattern="\n")[[2]])
  
  # Remove empty strings, remove the ASAP sports tag from strings
  raw.text <- gsub(text.clean.split[text.clean.split != ""],pattern=" FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports",replacement="")
  
  # Extract date (in second string)
  date <- mdy(raw.text[2])
  
  # Find index of the string where the interview starts, which is the first string where 'Q.' and 'MODERATOR' serves as a prompt
  # For interviews taking place after games, there is additional text in the preamble. Therefore, if this index is large, we can infer this is a post-game interview 
  interview.starts <- min(c(which(str_detect(raw.text,"Q.")),which(str_detect(raw.text,"MODERATOR")),which(str_detect(raw.text,"STUART SCOTT"))))
  
  # Third string contains the interview subject, though everything is squashed together
  # Put spaces between capital letters, split based on whitespace, then combine the second and fourth token as the subject
  tokens <- unlist(strsplit(gsub('([[:upper:]])',' \\1',raw.text[3]),"[[:space:]]"))
  subject <- paste(tokens[2],tokens[4])
  
  # Actual text is from the above found index onward
  interview.text <- raw.text[interview.starts:length(raw.text)]
  
  # Remove general prompts
  relevant.interview.text <- paste(interview.text[!str_detect(interview.text,"Q.") & !str_detect(interview.text,"MODERATOR")],collapse=" ")
  
  # Combine information into data frame
  interview.data <- data.frame(Date=date,Subject=subject,Text=relevant.interview.text,stringsAsFactors=F)
  
  return(interview.data)
  
}
extract_urls = function(event_url) {
  transcript_urls = read_html(event_url) %>%
    html_nodes("a") %>%
    html_attr("href")
}

rel_urls = function(url) {
  relevant_urls = url[grepl(url, pattern = "show_event.php?", fixed = T)]
}

ret_transcripts = function(url) {
  transcripts = rbind.fill(map(url, extract.interview.text))
  return(transcripts)
}

finals07 = paste0("http://www.asapsports.com/show_events.php?category=11&year=2007&title=NBA+FINALS%3A+CAVALIERS+v+SPURS")
finals11 = paste0("http://www.asapsports.com/show_events.php?category=11&year=2011&title=NBA+FINALS%3A+MAVERICKS+v+HEAT")
finals12 = paste0("http://www.asapsports.com/show_events.php?category=11&year=2012&title=NBA+FINALS%3A+HEAT+v+THUNDER")
finals13 = paste0("http://www.asapsports.com/show_events.php?category=11&year=2013&title=NBA+FINALS%3A+SPURS+v+HEAT")
finals14 = paste0("http://www.asapsports.com/show_events.php?category=11&year=2014&title=NBA+FINALS%3A+HEAT+v+SPURS")
finals15 = paste0("http://www.asapsports.com/show_events.php?category=11&year=2015&title=NBA+FINALS%3A+CAVALIERS+v+WARRIORS")
finals16 = paste0("http://www.asapsports.com/show_events.php?category=11&year=2016&title=NBA+FINALS%3A+CAVALIERS+v+WARRIORS")
finals17 = paste0("http://www.asapsports.com/show_events.php?category=11&year=2017&title=NBA+FINALS%3A+CLEVELAND+VS+GOLDEN+STATE")
finals18 = paste0("http://www.asapsports.com/show_events.php?category=11&year=2018&title=NBA+FINALS%3A+CAVALIERS+vs+WARRIORS")

finalslinks = c(finals07, finals11, finals12, finals13, finals14, finals15, finals16, finals17, finals18)

# Extract links
transcript_urls = lapply(finalslinks, FUN = extract_urls)
# Relevant links have the 'show_event.php?' tag
relevant_urls = lapply(transcript_urls, FUN = rel_urls)
rel07 = relevant_urls[[1]]
rel11 = relevant_urls[[2]]
rel12 = relevant_urls[[3]]
rel13 = relevant_urls[[4]]
rel14 = relevant_urls[[5]]
rel15 = relevant_urls[[6]]
rel16 = relevant_urls[[7]]
rel17 = relevant_urls[[8]]
rel18 = relevant_urls[[9]]

t07 = rbind.fill(map(rel07,get.transcripts))
t11 = rbind.fill(map(rel11,get.transcripts))
t12 = rbind.fill(map(rel12,get.transcripts))
t13 = rbind.fill(map(rel13,get.transcripts))
t14 = rbind.fill(map(rel14,get.transcripts))
t15 = rbind.fill(map(rel15,get.transcripts))
t16 = rbind.fill(map(rel16,get.transcripts))
t17 = rbind.fill(map(rel17,get.transcripts))
t18 = rbind.fill(map(rel18,get.transcripts))

Manipulating Data

Now that I have tables for each Finals series, it’s time to put them all together for analysis. First, I added another column to designate which series these interviews were held in. Then, I bound them all together to make one whole table, and filtered out interviews with players, coaches, and other people that I did not need for this project.

I also did some string manipulation to fix some errors.

t07 = t07 %>%
  mutate(Series = "2007")
t11 = t11 %>%
  mutate(Series = "2011")
t12 = t12 %>%
  mutate(Series = "2012")
t13 = t13 %>%
  mutate(Series = "2013")
t14 = t14 %>%
  mutate(Series = "2014")
t15 = t15 %>%
  mutate(Series = "2015")
t16 = t16 %>%
  mutate(Series = "2016")
t17 = t17 %>%
  mutate(Series = "2017")
t18 = t18 %>%
  mutate(Series = "2018")

ft = bind_rows(t07, t11, t12, t13, t14, t15, t16, t17, t18)

ft = ft %>%
  mutate(Subject = gsub(Subject, pattern="Le ", replacement="LeBron James"))

ft = ft %>%
  filter(Subject %in% c("LeBron James", "Mike Brown", "Erik Spoelstra", "David Blatt", "Tyronn Lue")) %>%
  mutate(Text = gsub(Text, pattern="Â", replacement="")) %>%
  mutate(Text = str_squish(Text)) %>%
  mutate(Text = gsub(Text, pattern="COACH MIKE BROWN: ", replacement="")) %>%
  mutate(Text = gsub(Text, pattern="COACH ERIK SPOELSTRA: ", replacement="")) %>%
  mutate(Text = gsub(Text, pattern="MIKE BROWN: ", replacement="")) %>%
  mutate(Text = gsub(Text, pattern="COACH SPOELSTRA: ", replacement="")) %>%
  mutate(Text = gsub(Text, pattern="ERIK SPOELSTRA: ", replacement="")) %>%
  mutate(Text = gsub(Text, pattern="COACH LUE: ", replacement="")) %>%
  mutate(Text = gsub(Text, pattern="TYRONN LUE: ", replacement="")) %>%
  mutate(Text = gsub(Text, pattern="LEBRON JAMES: ", replacement="")) %>%
  mutate(Text = gsub(Text, pattern="LeBRON JAMES: ", replacement="")) %>%
  mutate(Text = gsub(Text, pattern="COACH BLATT: ", replacement="")) %>%
  mutate(Text = gsub(Text, pattern="COACH BROWN: ", replacement=""))

## Somehow Dwyane Wade snuck himself in there
ft$Text[27] = gsub(ft$Text[27], pattern = "DWYANE WADE: It's unfortunate. Obviously we put ourselves in a position on the road especially to win games. We haven't been able to do that. That's been our staple. That's the reason we're here. The good thing about life and the good thing about this game, we get another opportunity, another crack at it. | DWYANE WADE: Well, I mean, obviously they're a tough team to guard. Like we said, they're the best offensive team in this game. But I guess they have momentum in the sense they came home and won two games. But each game is its own. We're going to come out -- every game has been pretty much a possession here, a possession there. Either team can come in and say they can be up different than what they are. We'll be coming to the game understanding it's a possession game in Game 6. Doing whatever it takes to win the ballgame. So we're confident.", replacement = "")
ft$Text[32] = gsub(ft$Text[32], pattern = "DWYANE WADE: The rhythm just, trying to make plays, maybe get to the basket, make some things happen. I can't shoot the free throw any better than I did. It went in and came out. The basketball gods didn't want it to go in. When you put yourself in a situation where you practice on that moment, you thought about that moment, you go out there and you shoot them like you normally do. That's what I did. It eventually came out. DWYANE WADE: We had many different options to look for. I was denied. I came back off another screen. I saw an opening. Mike threw the ball and I was trying to get to the opening, probably before I caught it. That's how I lost it. Just trying to get the ball back before it went over half court. ", replacement = "")
ft$Text[32] = gsub(ft$Text[32], pattern = "DWYANE WADE: Just trying to make plays. My teammates and my team count on me to be more than one-dimensional. So obviously I'm in an offensive rhythm. It's just one side of the ball. On the other end of the floor my matchup is to chase Jason Terry around. I have to do that. If I'm off the ball I try to be more active. Just make plays. Sometimes it results in blocks or steals or rebounds. It's The Finals. You just want to make sure every night you leave the court you feel like you left it all out there. It's not always going to be a positive result, but at the end of the day, if you feel like you left it all out there, you can be satisfied with the result. DWYANE WADE: Obviously, we had opportunity to win the ballgame. The one thing about this series, you see no team is ever safe. When it looks like one team may be in control of the game, the other team comes back. So that's why it's a 48-minute game. Obviously their supporting cast did a good job. They've been getting pounded by you guys for the last 48 hours. So there's a lot of pride. They came out and played well. They had a lot of different guys do a lot of good things. ", replacement = "")
ft$Text[37] = gsub(ft$Text[37], pattern = "DWYANE WADE: That's awesome, because we felt the same way. You can't lose a game like that and come and lose Game 3. We felt this was a must-win. We had to put it upon ourselves to try to take home court back in a sense, and by any means necessary. DWYANE WADE: Obviously, you know, we have a lot of confidence in our team defense. That was a man-to-man defense right there. It was Udonis putting his chest in front. We had a lot of confidence coming out of the huddle. We wanted to win this game right now on the defensive end with that stop. Even more confidence than we had if we were down two or tied and had it on the offensive end. DWYANE WADE: Them guys understand. They know me. I understand them. If things are said to each other, it's all in the better for the team. It's all about winning. I want it. LeBron knew that. The things I was saying to him, I was saying to Chris, wasn't nothing they wouldn't say to me. It was something they would say to me in the Chicago series and vice versa. We have enough respect for each other. At the same time, I wanted it. | DWYANE WADE: I mean, obviously a game of basketball is a game full of runs. So there was moments in the game where offense looked great and their offense looked great. There were points where neither offense looked great. Obviously they did a good job of turning up their pressure. I thought we got ourselves in a little trouble by getting late clock. When we do that, they're able to turn up the pressure. It makes us take bad shots or settle for shots. DWYANE WADE: Obviously Dirk is great. A great one-on-one player. A great shooter. We understand Dirk is going to get his numbers. It's our job just to try to make it tough on other guys. They have guys that can score the ball. Shawn Marion has come into this averaging 18 and 9. Jason Terry was huge for them in Game 2 and an unbelievable scorer. They have other guys that can score. It's our job to make it tough. They've shown they have a deep bench. They've shown they have a very good team. They wouldn't be in The Finals without none of them guys. So we're not going to give Dirk all the credit at all. This Dallas Mavericks team is very deep.", replacement = "")
ft$Text[47] = gsub(ft$Text[47], pattern = "DWYANE WADE: Well, it's kind of like watching Chris grow during this playoff series. Obviously, we all had an opportunity to watch him play a little bit in the regular season, and not much in the playoffs. But he's been up for the challenge. He said he had a bad game today. We looked and said, I'll take 19 and 9. He's just an efficient player. | DWYANE WADE: Well, obviously, that's one of the ideas of us playing together. For one individual to not have to carry that load. Obviously we love to have a guy explode for a 40-point night. But more so I think what he wanted me to do was look back at how aggressive I was, the mentality that I had. And I actually wasn't trying to, but I did watch Game 3 on TV last night in the fourth quarter. I see I had no conscious back then. DWYANE WADE: In his thumbs, everything. DWYANE WADE: Momentum. I knew what he was going to do. He let the clock go all the way down to four before he decided to move. When he had it in his right hand, I knew what he was going to do. I shoot with him after practice every day, so I know him. Not many guys can make that. It's a tough shot to make. Going to your right, you have to be strong to make something like that. But that was just about a momentum swing for our team and a confidence boost going into the fourth quarter with a four-point lead. DWYANE WADE: No. ", replacement = "")
ft$Text[72] = gsub(ft$Text[72], pattern = "DWYANE WADE: It all depends what you mean. I was attacking, getting my teammates shots, and I got shots for myself. Attacking to me is just being aggressive. Some nights I have big nights scoring and some nights I don't. That's been the season. That's just the way that it's designed for me. | DWYANE WADE: I think we had that answer when it kept moving. Sometimes the game goes to where guys attack a little more, especially when the ball is me and LeBron handle a lot, we attack a lot and it's not as much swing‑swing, and that's good for our team. But we'll look at it and we'll see why and we'll see if we can get better opportunities. DWYANE WADE: Sorry, man. You know, it's The Finals. I've been doing it all year. I am going to continue to do it. I'm a winner, so I'm just doing whatever I can help to help my team win. Some nights ‑‑ one night I'm going to have a big night scoring, some nights I'm going to have a big nights doing other things. Just doing whatever it takes to win the ballgame, not necessarily sitting up here worrying about scoring 30 points. I know that's going to make you guys feel better. I'm all about winning. We didn't win tonight, and that's the biggest thing, so we'll find a way to win Game 2, not necessarily worried about me scoring 30.", replacement = "")
ft$Text[85] = gsub(ft$Text[85], pattern = "DWYANE WADE: Can't really explain it right now. But they continue to have great starts. We continue to start slow. We just digged ourselves in a deep hole very early, and unlike Game 3, we fought back. We got it, like you said, within one. We used so much to get back, and they continued to keep coming at us. So the lead kept going back and forth. But we kept fighting, we kept feeling like we had a chance. This was a game that it was like we could steal it. But they continued to make shots. Credit to them. Their starters played big tonight. All of them made shots. They shot 60% from the field in a tough game. | DWYANE WADE: Well, I mean we challenge ourselves to see if we're a better team than we was. Same position no matter how we got to it. We're in the same position going back home with Game 6 on our home floor. So we're going to see if we're a better ballclub and if we're better prepared for this moment. | DWYANE WADE: I mean, this is the kind of team that I feel capitalizes on any mistake you make. So if you're half a second late, they capitalize on it. DWYANE WADE: I think you said it. They're a very great team. We're a great team as well. So at this time we're going to make another adjustment. It's going to be very small. But that's not what's going to win the ballgame. Just like tonight the adjustment they made with throwing more isolations at Tony Parker didn't necessarily win the ballgame but it helped. It changed things. DWYANE WADE: I think obviously you cannot stop yourself from thinking that way, you know. Last year we had opportunity we were up 3‑1, I couldn't go to sleep that night. All I thought about was all we have to do is win one more and we're champions. So obviously you're going to think that way. You also have a game to play. And so I'm sure this team, they've been here before many times. They understand winning that last game is one of the hardest things you're going to do. And we understand it as well. But you know what, it's the game, we got to play it. I like our chances, just like they like their chances, in this series and in Game 6. We'll see. We'll see which team, which style is going to prevail. ", replacement = "")
ft$Text[120] = gsub(ft$Text[120], pattern = "DWYANE WADE: A combination. Like you said, I mean, they jumped on us early, and that went from ‑‑ to confidence when they didn't miss, and now you're fighting to get back. Now you're not playing the rhythm in the way you normally play. You're forcing things. DWYANE WADE: Yeah, we dug ourselves a pretty big hole. But, you know, we're a resilient team. We're going to keep fighting. I thought third quarter we came out with a lot of energy, the way we'd have loved to start the game. Pushed it, got it to like 10. But this team they still had a rhythm going, they made plays as a team to not let us get any closer. But we did what we wanted to do out of the timeout. We wanted to come out of the first timeout, we wanted to cut the lead, trim it down. I think we got it to 12, 13 the first one. We cut it within 10 by the end of the quarter, but we couldn't get it as close as we wanted. They had a good rhythm going. They made shots. | DWYANE WADE: Well, you know, we're going to continue to give him confidence. Mario is a big piece of what we do, and we're missing that piece right now, for whatever the reason is. But as a team, we're going to continue to give him confidence so when he has his shot, shoot it, take it. Defensively, Mario is someone who we depend on to cause havoc, and we need him to do that. | DWYANE WADE: Well, when they're missing, defense is great. When they're making shots, your defense is lackluster. You know, it's the nature of the beast. Tonight they shot the ball very well. We helped them early on by giving them rhythm, and they knocked shots down from there. It's things that we've done in previous games. You contest them. You look and see, Danny Green was 7‑for‑8, but only hit one three. He got a lot of dribbling and we closed him off the three. He went to the basket a lot tonight. Little different than what he's done, but that's the job that we're supposed to do. Now we've got to figure out a way if they make that adjustment, we have to be aware of it. But it's a hit‑or‑miss league.", replacement = "")

ft = ft %>%
  mutate(Text = gsub(Text, pattern="FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports", replacement=""))

ft = ft %>%
  select(Series, everything()) %>%
  mutate(Subject = as.factor(Subject))

Using Lexicons

I used the nrc lexicon for this project.

Sentiment Analysis Part I

In this part, I did a sentiment analysis for each interview and tested the occurrence of each type of sentiment over time and per person, as well as the overall sentiment per person and per series, trying to see if there were any trends among the different subjects and whether or not a win affected the overall sentiment of LeBron and his coaches.

Preliminary Analyses

Before I move on to the actual sentiment analysis, I did some initial analysis on word frequency - both per series, and per person

Let’s display the 15 most commonly used words by each coach and LeBron, and their frequency.

We can see that ‘game’, ‘team’, and ‘guys’ are mentioned quite a lot. Most of the coaches mention winning with the exception of Mike Brown, who also seems to mention LeBron a lot more than the other three coaches. ‘Day’ is also mentioned a lot because apparently LeBron likes saying ‘at the end of the day’. No surprising insights here.

What about if we analyzed it per series?

Not much to see here again. Game, team, and guys are mentioned a lot, and like in the frequency chart above, winning is not mentioned much in the 2007 series (coached by Mike Brown). Some notable words are aggressive (mentioned in 2011 in a loss, and 2016 in a win), wade (the only time a player is mentioned in this chart, in 2011).

Sentiment Analysis Over Time

Note the high frequency of positive (positive, joy, trust, anticipation) sentiment for young LeBron in the 2007 Finals, which, along with other sentiments, balanced out in his 8-year run of consecutive Finals appearances. Other than that, there seems to be no visible spikes per year, and every coach seems to be consistent in their sentiment throughout the years (the coaches with the most variation at eye level seem to be Erik Spoelstra and Tyronn Lue).

Let’s try to zoom in into the 2016 Finals, which went to 7 games and resulted in a win for LeBron and his team.

This was a very volatile series in terms of sentiment. You can see negative trends in positivity towards the middle of the series, when Cleveland went down 3-1 and lost a lot of hope in taking back the series, but we can also see the spikes in anticipation and surprise after that, which was when Cleveland was gaining traction and catching up in the series. Other than that, you can see that LeBron’s sentiments were rather balanced over time, while Tyronn Lue’s was relatively more fluctuating. This is interesting because usually, it’s the player who reveals more emotion, especially in a series like this.

Overall Sentiment Per Person

This is interesting. We can see that in terms of coaches, Erik Spoelstra and Tyronn Lue (by a large margin) had lower average sentiments than David Blatt and Mike Brown, despite being the two coaches that have won at least one Finals series. This could be them doing their job by not getting too excited over the possibility of winning (which also goes the other way with Brown and Blatt raising their positivity despite bad outcomes). This, however, should be not be taken as a be-all end-all of things since Brown and Blatt have also only been to 1 Finals series each as LeBron’s coach.

Sentiment Analysis Part II

In this part, I analyzed LeBron’s sentiment throughout all his appearances in the Finals. There were 11 years, nearly a thousand games played, and an average career’s worth of experiences in between those two appearances. Both of these appearances ended in a sweep, but they are far from the same thing. Let’s see how LeBron grew in terms of his attitude in post-game interviews throughout his Finals career. We saw some of this earlier, but let’s put LeBron on focus.

Overall Sentiment Over Time

We don’t see much here that we didn’t already see before. Let’s take a look at his overall sentiment over time.

We can see a very sharp drop from 2007 to 2011-2013. The three-year span that began LeBron’s stay in Miami was very scrutinized and he was seen in a very negative light (at least in the first year and a half of that span). From a wide-eyed 22-year-old in his first Finals appearance, LeBron became the face of the league and was subject to a lot of criticism. For a time, he snapped back at the criticism, which is probably why his overall sentiment in his first three years in Miami were so low compared to the rest. We can see as well that once he went back to Cleveland, won in 2016, and became one of the most established players in the league (and its history), his overall sentiment became more consistent, despite incurring more losses in 2017 and 2018. I think we could call this a sign of maturity…

Zooming into the 2007, 2011, and 2016 Finals

The 2007, 2011, and 2016 Finals were drastically different for LeBron and his teams. In 2007, he was a 22-year-old underdog facing a well-established dynasty. He was still a rising star in the league. In 2011, it was his first Finals with the heavily-scrutinized and criticized Miami Heat. He was a villain in the league and was rooted against by majority of fans. Both ended in losses. In 2016, he was on a mission to bring a title to Cleveland after coming back the year before, and was the face of the league at that point. He won in a historical manner, with the Cavs becoming the first team in Finals history to come back from a 3-1 deficit to defeat the heavily favored Golden State Warriors. So yeah, very different years.

Sentiment Analysis Part I

Sentiment Analysis Part I

We can see that in 2017, sentiment is generally positive, but was very volatile (going below negative around the end of the first half of the series). After that, sentiment goes generally high and remains positive. In 2011, sentiment is generally lower, with a very low sentiment in the middle of the series (Dallas was catching up and LeBron was underperforming really badly at this point). It got lower again at the end of the series, with the infamous post-game interview where LeBron called out and ridiculed his haters. Surprisingly, LeBron’s sentiment in the 2016 Finals was low as well. Generally, the sentiment in this series was low because of how low the chances of Cleveland winning were at those point. After the lowest point, and Cleveland’s chances were getting higher again, the sentiment goes up .

Let’s take a look at which words were used most by LeBron in these 3 Finals series.

It looks like 2016 was the era that LeBron used “at the end of the day” a lot more. In 2011, there was a lot of mention of his teammate and co-star Dwyane Wade. 2007 was very generic in the sense that a lot of regular basketball terms were used.

Topic Modeling

Let’s look at the different topics discussed in each of the series.

## Building corpus...
## Converting to Lower Case...
## Removing punctuation...
## Removing stopwords...
## Removing numbers...
## Creating Output...
## Removing 1697 of 3376 terms (1697 of 18230 tokens) due to frequency
## Your corpus now has 144 documents, 1679 terms and 16533 tokens.

It looks like 5 is an idea k to use for number of topics.

We can’t learn much from this plot. Let’s look at each topic further.

## Topic 1 Top Words:
##       Highest Prob: just, know, think, guys, game, going, dont
##       FREX: ali, muhammad, continue, along, actually, young, live
##       Lift: compared, crossed, iggy, medical, social, suits, unfortunate
##       Score: ali, muhammad, kids, social, drafted, suits, worry
## Topic 2 Top Words:
##       Highest Prob: know, like, dont, team, just, game, well
##       FREX: stay, finals, season, lose, compete, may, havent
##       Lift: affected, bird, cavaliers, chemistry, club, dream, everythings
##       Score: stay, club, huh, idea, injuries, chemistry, affected
## Topic 3 Top Words:
##       Highest Prob: just, game, got, guys, think, great, thought
##       FREX: thought, physical, tough, job, steph, half, transition
##       Lift: bogut, locking, mismatches, ohio, one--one, phil, preparation
##       Score: late, physical, thought, review, mismatches, defensively, switching
## Topic 4 Top Words:
##       Highest Prob: game, going, get, just, make, ball, well
##       FREX: shot, offense, attack, rhythm, keep, offensive, shoot
##       Lift: knock, bruce, careers, competitiveness, created, dared, defenses
##       Score: finish, possessions, free‑throw, doubt, d-wade, rebound, takes
## Topic 5 Top Words:
##       Highest Prob: thats, hes, game, different, get, play, weve
##       FREX: certainly, particularly, different, incredible, competition, ways, similar
##       Lift: according, arent, coached, culture, mentioned, met, quickly
##       Score: similar, incredible, certainly, identity, culture, areas, deserved

We’re learning a little bit more. We can see that topic 1 could be talking about improving after a bad game. Topic 2 could be talking about being consistent. Topic 3, on the other hand talks a lot about talent and greatness (and mentions muhammad ali). Topic 4 gets more into the technical side, with words like shot, transition, points, pick-and-roll, etc. Topic 5 talks a lot about preparation, with words like film, possessions, defense, and competition. Let’s look even further.

##
##  Topic 1:
##       First of all, my condolences goes to the Ali family. Rest his soul to the goat. I'm not sure I'm going to answer your question exactly how you wanted to, but so many thoughts come to mind when I think about the man who passed away yesterday, what he represented. As a kid I gravitated towards him because he was a champion, but I only knew as a kid of what he did inside the ring. As I got older and I started to be more knowledgeable about the sport, about sport in general and about the guys who paved the way for guys like myself, I understood that he is the greatest of all time, and he was the greatest of all time because of what he did outside of the ring. Obviously, we knew how great of a boxer he was, but I think that was only 20% of what made him as great as he was. What he stood for, I mean, it's a guy who basically had to give up a belt and relish everything that he had done because of what he believed in and ended up in jail because of his beliefs. It's a guy who stood up for so many different things throughout the times where it was so difficult for African-Americans to even walk in the streets. For an athlete like myself today, without Muhammad Ali, I wouldn't be sitting up here talking in front of you guys. I wouldn't be able to walk in restaurants. I wouldn't be able to go anywhere where blacks weren't allowed back in those days because of guys like Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown, Oscar Robertson, Bill Russell, Lew Alcindor, Jackie Robinson, and the list goes on and on. So when an icon like Muhammad Ali passes away, it's just very emotional. It's also gratifying to know that that guy, one man, would sacrifice so much of his individual life knowing that it would better the next generation of men and women after him. I just think it's in you. If it's in you, then it will be brought to light. If it's not, then it won't. I would never compare myself to Muhammad Ali because I never had to go through what those guys had to go through back in those times. But in my own daily struggles, as I continue to say, growing up in the inner city, being a statistic that was supposed to go the other way and I'm able to sit up here today and knowing that I was a guy who beat the odds, it's just you never take for granted the path and the guys who just every single day just struggled in their individual lives and everything they had to go through on a daily basis for us, for a guy like myself. I think what's unfortunate sometimes where some of our greats and some of our role models and some of our leaders is that we don't appreciate them until they're gone, and I think that's unfortunate. But I think in Muhammad's case, I hope we were able to appreciate him from the time that he was set or stepped foot on Earth. And along his path from a kid all the way to a teenager all the way to an adult and to a father and so on and so on, his legacy will obviously live on. It's funny, last night we were back at the hotel, and a good friend of mine, a role model friend of mine who actually grew up in the same hometown as Muhammad Ali and kind of around the same age, he put on last night, on the TV where we were, the Thrilla in Manila, the fight between Ali and Frazier. It was just an unbelievable pound-for-pound slugfest, but just two greats just seizing the opportunity and seizing the moment to be in it and do what they love to do. I just wanted to be someone to help him get to a point -- I think his talent has always been there. We all saw that, since he was drafted to Cleveland and his first few years with the team. What I wanted to -- once I came back, I wanted to see if I could help him grow as a leader, help him grow as a basketball player, help him grow and understanding how important and how fragile these opportunities are. And he's just shown growth every single day. He's a young man still. I think the kid's only 24 years old. He's still a young man, but he's accepted the challenge of being much more vocal, much more hands on as a leader of the team. He's the quarterback with the plays, with the playbook on his wrist. When you see the quarterback kind of -- you know. I'm kind of the offensive coordinator and T. Lue is the head coach and he's the quarterback and he has to go out and make the right reads. At the end of the day it's not about myself or Steph or Klay or Kyrie or Draymond and the list goes on and on. It's about the Warriors and the Cavs. You win a championship, we all don't get an individual trophy, you know (laughing). You all get your individual rings. But at the end of the day, it's about a team. This is one of the greatest ultimate sport team games. So it's not about that. Yeah, just tall.
##  Topic 2:
##       I don't think it's affected it. The load that I have to carry offensively, it's been what the season has asked for. Obviously, we haven't had many playmakers throughout the course of the season. We had some early on, and we made the trades and things of that nature. But it's been what the season has called for, and I've taken that responsibility to be able to have to make plays for myself and make plays for my teammates as well. Oh, absolutely. I mean, listen, not only from a brotherhood aspect and what we know about one another, and also from an experience factor. I believe that he would have been very, very good for us in the postseason. He's a guy that's kind of built for the postseason at this point in his career, who lives for the moment. That's too hard for me to answer right now. Like I said, I can answer that once this series is over. Like I told you guys before, this has been one of the most challenging seasons of my career from the standpoint of what's been going on with our ballclub. Not only from a playing perspective, but things -- guys changing, personnel changing, Coach being out for a couple weeks, players leaving and being out for a couple of weeks, injuries and things of that nature. At the end of the day, you can never count out a champion, no matter what's going on in the course of their season. It's impossible to do that, because they're built from a different cloth, and I know that firsthand. When you win a championship and you're around guys for a long period of time, and you know what you're capable of doing, all you need is to get healthy. If you can get healthy and guys are playing at the right level at the same time, then you can feel like you can beat anybody. So the best thing about their team is that if one of their stars goes down, they have two or three other stars that are still able to hold the ship until everybody gets back. Steph's injury, him going down, K.D. and Klay, who never misses a game, and Draymond still being in the lineup -- if you look at the previous time when K.D. went down, the rest of those guys were in and held it until K.D. came back for the playoffs the year before that. When you have the luxury of not being pressured to come back so fast -- and even with Iguodala, him not being pressured to feel like he needs to get back on the floor to help the team win, that the guys are going to continue to play well and whenever you're ready, we'll be ready for you to join. I think it helps the injury as well, because you're not putting that much pressure on yourself. It's been a treat to watch, being a parent and seeing my son grow as a basketball player. But not only that, being a young man who he is today; the kid will be 14 soon. Just seeing him grow and grow and grow to become who he is today has been a treat. I think from the burden of him having the name itself, I think him understanding that just go out and just play the game and have fun and play for your teammates and give it all you've got. You play hard, you play smart and have fun, and let everything else take care of itself. The one thing that I have is the luxury of knowing everything that he can expect. There's nothing that can hit him that I haven't seen in my life. There is no obstacle that he will run into that I haven't been a part of that I can't coach him. No, listen, I love to compete. At the end of the day, no matter win, lose or draw, being a part of the biggest stage in our sport is something that I've always loved and never taken for granted. I think the simple fact to be available to my teammates every single night and knowing that I will be in uniform, that's the pride factor right there that I don't take for granted. And that's something I take a lot of pride in, just working my body every single day, no matter if it's a win, if it's a loss. No matter if we're getting in at three o'clock in the morning, four o'clock in the morning, waking up the next day and doing something, either from a treatment side, lifting, conditioning, shooting or just preparing myself for the long journey. I just feel like I'm in a great groove right now as far as my career, as far as my body, knowing what I need to do to be in the best possible shape. I said this at one point throughout this playoff run -- I had a walk-off with Cassidy Hubbarth after the game, and I told her it's the best I've felt in my career. She kind of gave me one of those Cassidy looks, and I got some response from that. But I was very truthful about it. From a team aspect? We just had great moments. We had great moments. It's hard for me. I'm not a guy that takes positives from games. If you lose, it's negative to me. It's just how I am. You can take little bits and pieces and say, OK, well, we played great for the first 24 minutes, but then we didn't play well for that 12 minutes in the third quarter. We should know that Golden State is the best third quarter team in the NBA, and they try to put you away in that third quarter. The fourth quarter, we had opportunities. They scored, we came right back. They hit momentum plays -- they went up 4, we came down and hit a 3. Made it a one-possession game. You've just got to try to hunker down and get stops and try to create a little space. But we weren't able to do that. So there were some positives, but there were a lot of negatives as well. I mean, in that series, I don't know. I mean, it's Kevin Durant at 23. It's Kevin Durant at 18, it's Kevin Durant at 20, 21, 22. There's nothing that Kevin Durant could show me at 23 that would make me like, Oh, years from now -- no, Kevin Durant was great at 23. As you get older and older, your game gets more and more seasoned. But everyone knew that. That's Kevin Durant. Yeah, that's the challenge in this league. I think every GM and every president and every coaching staff is trying to figure out how they can make up the right matchups to compete for a championship and win a championship. Like you said before, I felt like my first stint here I just didn't have the level of talent to compete versus the best teams in the NBA, let alone just Boston. When you looked at (Rajon) Rondo and KG and Paul (Pierce) and Ray, you knew they were great basketball players. But not only great basketball players, you could see their minds were in it, too, when you were playing them. They were calling out sets. Rondo was calling out sets every time you come down. It was like, OK, this is bigger than basketball. So not only do you have to have the talent, you have to have the minds as well. I knew that my talent level here in Cleveland couldn't succeed getting past a Boston, getting past the San Antonios of the league or whatever the case may be. I played with D-Wade, I played with Bosh in the Olympics. I knew D-Wade for years. I knew their minds. I knew how they thought the game, more than just playing the game. Obviously, we all knew their talent, but I knew their minds as well. So I linked up with them. We went to Miami. Got some other great minds in Mike Miller; UD (Udonis Haslem) is a great mind but also a competitor. And guys that were talents. You build that talent. That's what you want to try to do. Then you come here. I knew Kyrie, having the talent, I wanted to try to build his mind up to fast track his mind because I felt like in order to win you've got to have talent, but you've got to be very cerebral too. Listen, we're all NBA players. Everybody knows how to put the ball in the hoop. But who can think throughout the course of the game? This is so challenging for me to sit up here and say because people who really don't know the game don't really know what I'm talking about. They just think that you go out, and, Oh, LeBron, you're bigger and faster and stronger than everybody, you should drive every single time and you should dunk every single play and you should never get tired, never. Like it's a video game and you went on the options and you turned down fatigue all the way to zero and injuries all the way down to zero (laughing). So we come back here and we get the minds and we build a championship team. And then Golden State, because of Steph's injuries early on in his career and his contract situation, and then them drafting Draymond and drafting Klay and them being under the contracts they were in, allowed their franchise to go out to get K.D. So they win a championship. Then we play them and we come back from 3-1 and we beat them. But that was the best regular season -- probably the best team I had ever played against. They go 73-9, and then you add one of the best players that the NBA has ever seen. So now everyone is trying to figure that out. How do you put together a group of talent but also a group of minds to be able to compete with Golden State, to be able to compete for a championship? That's what GMs and presidents and certain players -- it's not every player. Every player does not want to -- sad to say, but every player doesn't want to compete for a championship and be in a position where every possession is pressure. Listen, at the end of the day, I'm living in the moment now. I went back for you for your question. We've had an opportunity to win two of these games in this three-game series so far, and we haven't come up with it. Obviously, from a talent perspective, if you're looking at Golden State from their top five best players to our top five players, you would say they're stacked better than us. Let's just speak truth. Kevin Durant. You've got two guys with MVPs on their team. And then you've got a guy in Klay who could easily be on a team and carry a team, score 40 in a quarter before. And then you have Draymond, who is arguably one of the best defenders and minds we have in our game. So you have that crew. Then you add on a Finals MVP coming off the bench, a number one pick in Livingston and an All-Star in David West and whatever the case may be. So they have a lot of talent. We have a lot of talent as well. We've been in a position where we could win two out of these three games. So what do we have to do? Do we have to make more shots? Is it we have to have our minds into it a little bit more? Is it if there is a ball on the ground we can't reach for it but you've got to dive for it? When you're playing, like I stated last night, or like 12 hours ago -- was it 12 hours ago? -- the room for error versus a team like this is slim to none. And I think I said last night it's like playing the Patriots. It's like playing San Antonio. The room for error is slim to none. When you make mistakes they make you pay, because they're already more talented than you are but they also have the minds behind it, too, and they also have the championship DNA.
##  Topic 3:
##       I don't think he got tired (laughing). I thought he was great. He said he felt good. With our season on the line, at the end of the third quarter he said, "I'm not coming out." I didn't have any intention on taking him out anyway. I don't care what y'all say. We're going to ride him. Just had to be aware. We can't be surprised when he shoots five or six feet behind the three-point line. He can make those shots. He does it consistently, so we've just always got to be aware. He has a quick trigger and he'll shoot it from anywhere. I thought a few times we let our guards down and we got caught by surprise because he shot it five feet from behind the three-point line. Just our guys' fight and our determination, and never wanting to give in. You know, we had two shaky games in Golden State to start the series, and you know, you can always prepare for them, but until you get in between those lines and see how fast they move, how hard they cut, how hard they play, you really can't get a gauge for it. So I thought Game 1 was, you know, was that test for us. Then Game 2, just kind of got away from us. Well, everything I do is Doc Rivers driven. He taught me everything as far as being a coach, giving me my first chance to coach. But just the poise from my first three seasons of being in L.A. with Phil Jackson and just saw how he in practice, he's teaching, he's coaching, he's on the floor. But when the game started, he was always poised and he let the guys figure it out. I think that meant a lot to me just seeing that because as players, if you're sitting on the bench and you hear coaches talking about certain players on the floor or getting mad or getting upset, you realize they say the same thing about you when you go in the game. Well, it means a lot. I thought J.R. gave us a good bump also. Kyrie and LeBron were special. Kevin came out with the right mindset because he got two early fouls and could never get in a rhythm. I thought he made a big three for us, some good switches and some post-ups that he was aggressive on, got fouled. But he could never quite find his rhythm after he got those two early fouls. Well, the last few days we've really been working on getting to the right spots because they do a great job of protecting the elbows and boxes and loading up. So really the last two or three days we really have focused in on Tristan being in the right spots because he's very important to what we're trying to do. And defensively being able to switch one through five with him is great for us, so we need him on the floor. Well, they were big at the time with at the guard spot, and a lot of guys had gotten in foul trouble. RJ had three, Kevin had three, Shump had three. So our next big body that can bring a physicality to the game and a defensive presence was Dahntay. He just tweaked it a little bit, but he's going to be fine. His performance was great. He really got us off to a great start in that first half. 20 points I think he had in the first half. And 6-for-12 from the field, getting to the free-throw line and attacking, and last game he had 22 points in transition of just pushing the basketball early offense, and getting to his spot. Well, they're a great team. They didn't win 73 games for no reason. They're going to make some shots. They're going to make some runs. That's just who they are. They've always been that way. But it's our job to try to minimize those runs. I thought the guys did a great job coming out of the timeout. Just being focused, regaining our focus, and then coming out and increasing the lead again to 16, 17 points. I mean, they gave it to us. Our crowd really gave it to us. In Game 3 I think, standing up the whole game, just being around the city and walking around, just the love and appreciation that we get around here, and then the fans tonight were unbelievable. So when they came back and cut that lead to 8, the fans stayed engaged. They never wavered, and we want to give the city of Cleveland a championship. We want to give the state of Ohio a championship. We want to give the Cleveland organization a championship. So that's what we're all about, and that's what we're trying to do.
##  Topic 4:
##       Yeah. Absolutely. I take full responsibility for our team's performance last night. Me as a leader, I can't afford to perform like I did last night and expect us to win on the road. It's that simple. I have to do whatever it takes. I mean, 7‑for‑21 isn't going to cut it. Zero free throws. I had 11 rebounds, I had 5 assists, but 7‑for‑21 and zero free throws ain't going to cut it. We've been at our best when I guess our backs are up against the wall. And we're at it again. Absolutely. We'll see what happens. Something has to give tomorrow night. They have a championship pedigree. They have four. We have two. So something has to give. We'll see what happens. You can't have both of them. If you can go 7‑for‑21, but you get to the free‑throw line ten‑plus times, you're being aggressive. You have to be able to shoot the ball high clip from the field if you're not going to the free‑throw line. You can't have both. At times it has. Last night a few of them did. A few of them didn't. But I know, I've shot the ball‑‑ my rhythm, I've been in good rhythm all year. I've worked on it enough. I'm just confident in my ability. And my teammates are going to put me in positions to succeed. And the coaching staff will put us in positions to succeed. I'm a positive guy. I love the game. I have fun with the game. As dark as it was last night, can't get no darker than that, especially for me. I think that's one way. Another way is for us to get‑‑ we have to get stops, too. And defensive rebounding, where I'm getting the ball off the backboard and trying to create some early offense instead of playing against their half‑court defense. He's doing something they haven't done this year. They're 29th in offensive rebounding this year. And Kawhi has found a way to‑‑ I think he's made an adjustment to get offensive rebounds. So it's part of my job, too. It's part of my job, too. I'm matched up with him a lot. I get caught sometimes trying to help out our bigs and rebounding. He's coming in flying in ‑‑ when I'm helping out with our bigs, he's coming in and getting rebounds. Well, I mean, I think first of all, I think David said it well, getting the ball on the move. Get some early offense. Not playing against their set defense as much. They're doing a good job of when I come off pick‑and‑rolls, they have a guy shrink the floor at the elbow and getting a big in front of my body and a guy guarding to pursue the ball as well. They are putting me in a position where they can crowd me a lot. If I can get the ball in transition where I'm facing my defender or maybe just one other defender, I can break their defense down. But I will watch film today. I'm going to break down the film. We already watched a lot of film. I'm going to break it down some more, and do a better job of attacking their defense tomorrow. Thanks.
##  Topic 5:
##       Basically the same thing. The further you go on, as it should, the competition gets better. And you have to earn it. If people just say it's about us and the fact that we're not winning, we don't have our act together, that's not giving any credit to the Pacers or what we're dealing with right now, with the Spurs. Yes. It was about as impactful a zero‑for‑one game as you can have in The Finals. And Mike knows what he brings onto the table for us. So many things on both ends of the court, and each series is different. It presents its own challenges. This we feel is the best move for now against the Spurs. Today it's about a mental break, but tomorrow we're going to be real about it. And, yes, the most significant factor, and that's not being able to put back‑to‑back wins, it's been the competition for the last two weeks. Indiana and now with San Antonio. Yeah, it takes somebody that's probably capable of being a lightning rod for a lot of judgment, and unfairly also, because for this to work, we had to put him in situations that are out of the box and would open the door for easy criticism from the outside. Everybody wants to put him in a conventional box of being a back‑end center and provide that type of post game for us. But in reality he has to do so many other versatile things for us to make this thing work. So he has the mentality to be able to handle that and he has to wear a lot of different hats for us to be successful. That's a curveball (laughing). He had a tremendous influence. Obviously I grew up as an NBA kid. Not necessarily knowing I wanted to get into coaching, but I was around it. I was in locker rooms and teams and coaches and players since I was six years old, seven years old. But I think the biggest influence he had on me was the discipline and the work ethic that I saw him have in his profession and I've carried over. And hopefully that would have been true whatever path I chose. I don't know for the rest of the league. It just depends on the personnel you have. I think that's probably the biggest thing you're seeing now, is organizations are playing to their strengths, whatever those strengths may be. Sometimes that's big. It's a trend right now, but the Lakers were winning with two bigs just four or five years ago. I think it's a terrible state for the profession right now. And look, all you have to do‑‑ I mean, we see it differently. The San Antonio organization and the Miami Heat organization. True success in the NBA you must have consistency of culture. When you see that type of turnover over and over and over, it's impossible to create any kind of sustainable consistent culture. I would hope that if somebody turned on a Heat game now, you could say that the ultimate compliment would be that we look like a Pat Riley‑coached team. We know what that means. Tough, competitive, defense‑minded, disciplined. Probably said the same thing when Stan coached the team or Ronny coached the team. I think that was probably overblown. That was 45 seconds into the game, so I don't think that really had a major impact. Again, it's something we felt we needed to do against this team for that game. If we feel that we have to make another change, we will. We won't hesitate. Particularly at this time of year. There's always a risk when you make moves like that, but we felt it was the best thing at this time. I don't know if we did plan on anything. You just have to go into the series and see what happens. You have to try to figure it out. We felt that they were the best team in the West all season long. It's the competition. The further you get, the better the teams are. The more you play the better teams, the less chance you'll have of going on a run of whatever, ten straight, 15 straight. It doesn't happen against the best teams. He has a great maturity, and we've developed a habit of owning it. Sometimes that's the toughest thing to do in this league. Particularly with expectations and all the analysis from outside, your initial human reaction is to deflect or point or blame. But our guys get quickly to the matter of just okay, here's the deal. Just own it so we can fix it and correct it and try to find the solution. He's proven his toughness, and he doesn't want to talk about his health. He would be disappointed if I talked about it. There's no excuse for it at this point of the year. He really should be commended that he's out there, and going back a month ago. But hey, he's willing to go out there and compete for his teammates and open himself up for criticism with expectations of something bigger. And he's giving us everything he has. You probably know what I'm going to say, or all our local guys know what I'm going to say. You have to be absolutely disciplined right now more than ever in the process. You can't talk about a win away from a game to play for. That will only muddy up your mind. The only thing we can control is how will we approach tomorrow, and what is our mindset. And do everything we possibly can to put us in the best position to compete and win on Sunday. You just have to get to a place where you embrace the competition, accept it and embrace it. They're a great basketball team. They can beat us just the same as we can beat them, and that's what ultimate competition is. You want it to be like that. You want to be challenged and pushed and hopefully have the competition bring out the best in you. No. People forget he's been in a similar shoes as Dwyane and LeBron and Chris before. He's averaged 27 a game in this league. If you're averaging that, you're not just a spot‑up shooter; you have to do it in a lot of different ways. Oh, yeah. Our hearts and thoughts go out to them. I've been there several times. I've been out there on a boat to watch Sunday football. It's a great venue. I'm still trying to wrap my mind around it, how it happened. But all of our thoughts are with those people, and I hope everybody is okay. That's scary, and I hope it doesn't change people's thoughts on going to those type of venues. They can be fun, as long asit's safe. It's a great spot. It's a shame.

Topic 1’s sample talks a lot about improving performance and taking care of the body (most likely spoken by LeBron). Topic 2’s sample talks very highly of the Heat players and mentioning a lot about different players’ strengths (most likely spoken by Erik Spoelstra). Topic 3’s sample talks a lot about the greatness of different opponents and the challenge of facing different teams, especially Golden State (most likely spoken by LeBron). Topic 4 talks about specifics of different games and the technical aspects of each game and how different players performed (most likely spoken by Tyronn Lue). Topic 5’s sample comes from the Spurs series, talking about improving and facing a new opponent in the Finals, as well as how the team prepared for the series (most likely spoken by Erik Spoelstra). These samples more or less confirm the topics discussed earlier:
1. Topic 1: Improvements
2. Topic 2: Consistency and Team Strengths
3. Topic 3: Talent and Greatness
4. Topic 4: Technical Aspects of the Game
5. Topic 5: Preparation

## Building corpus...
## Converting to Lower Case...
## Removing punctuation...
## Removing stopwords...
## Removing numbers...
## Creating Output...
## Your new corpus now has 100 documents, 1347 non-zero terms of 2726 total terms in the original set.
## 1379 terms from the new data did not match.
## This means the new data contained 80.2% of the old terms
## and the old data contained 49.4% of the unique terms in the new data.
## You have retained 18519 tokens of the 20571 tokens you started with (90.0%).
## ....................................................................................................
## Building corpus...
## Converting to Lower Case...
## Removing punctuation...
## Removing stopwords...
## Removing numbers...
## Creating Output...
## Removing 1995 of 4284 terms (1995 of 31247 tokens) due to frequency
## Your corpus now has 244 documents, 2289 terms and 29252 tokens.
##
## Call:
## estimateEffect(formula = 1:5 ~ Series, stmobj = topicPredictor,
##     metadata = interviewPrep$meta)
##
##
## Topic 1:
##
## Coefficients:
##             Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)
## (Intercept)  0.58767    0.05838  10.066  < 2e-16 ***
## Series2011  -0.52911    0.07037  -7.519 1.16e-12 ***
## Series2012  -0.47743    0.07622  -6.264 1.77e-09 ***
## Series2013  -0.53444    0.06698  -7.979 6.49e-14 ***
## Series2014  -0.47857    0.07292  -6.563 3.34e-10 ***
## Series2015  -0.35593    0.07432  -4.789 2.96e-06 ***
## Series2016  -0.53242    0.06753  -7.885 1.18e-13 ***
## Series2017  -0.52630    0.06781  -7.761 2.57e-13 ***
## Series2018  -0.55647    0.06890  -8.077 3.47e-14 ***
## ---
## Signif. codes:  0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1
##
##
## Topic 2:
##
## Coefficients:
##             Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)
## (Intercept)  0.04717    0.06027   0.783  0.43467
## Series2011   0.39956    0.08350   4.785 3.02e-06 ***
## Series2012   0.28104    0.09045   3.107  0.00212 **
## Series2013   0.47157    0.08214   5.741 2.89e-08 ***
## Series2014   0.34747    0.08378   4.148 4.70e-05 ***
## Series2015   0.14774    0.08198   1.802  0.07280 .
## Series2016  -0.01624    0.07485  -0.217  0.82839
## Series2017  -0.01248    0.07769  -0.161  0.87256
## Series2018  -0.04074    0.08255  -0.493  0.62212
## ---
## Signif. codes:  0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1
##
##
## Topic 3:
##
## Coefficients:
##             Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)
## (Intercept)  0.23089    0.06769   3.411 0.000762 ***
## Series2011  -0.07486    0.08290  -0.903 0.367435
## Series2012  -0.04904    0.08962  -0.547 0.584799
## Series2013  -0.11488    0.08418  -1.365 0.173677
## Series2014  -0.16814    0.08670  -1.939 0.053645 .
## Series2015  -0.06160    0.08640  -0.713 0.476572
## Series2016   0.32392    0.08451   3.833 0.000163 ***
## Series2017   0.28775    0.08654   3.325 0.001026 **
## Series2018   0.25840    0.09425   2.742 0.006581 **
## ---
## Signif. codes:  0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1
##
##
## Topic 4:
##
## Coefficients:
##             Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)
## (Intercept)  0.07791    0.05479   1.422  0.15634
## Series2011   0.15630    0.07671   2.037  0.04272 *
## Series2012   0.14597    0.07851   1.859  0.06424 .
## Series2013   0.21227    0.07321   2.900  0.00409 **
## Series2014   0.21721    0.07859   2.764  0.00616 **
## Series2015   0.03259    0.07109   0.458  0.64707
## Series2016   0.04225    0.07107   0.595  0.55273
## Series2017   0.06782    0.07219   0.939  0.34844
## Series2018   0.04259    0.07616   0.559  0.57656
## ---
## Signif. codes:  0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1
##
##
## Topic 5:
##
## Coefficients:
##             Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)
## (Intercept)  0.05573    0.05925   0.941 0.347907
## Series2011   0.04977    0.07664   0.649 0.516726
## Series2012   0.10061    0.08298   1.213 0.226534
## Series2013  -0.03439    0.07412  -0.464 0.643085
## Series2014   0.08198    0.08058   1.017 0.310010
## Series2015   0.23951    0.08053   2.974 0.003245 **
## Series2016   0.18355    0.07481   2.454 0.014867 *
## Series2017   0.18317    0.07833   2.338 0.020207 *
## Series2018   0.29944    0.08360   3.582 0.000415 ***
## ---
## Signif. codes:  0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1

Let’s plot this out.

EXCUSE THE PLOTS

Topic 1 has a very high rate of usage in the 2007 series. Topic 2 gets more varied, but has high rate of probability in the 2013 series (mostly Miami Heat series). Topic 3 has high rate of usage in the 3 most recent Cavs series. Topic 4 has a high rate in the 2013 and 2014 Finals, which were played against the Spurs - likely to be the cause of the high volume of technical talk. Topic 5 has a generally high rate in the most recent NBA Finals series in 2018.

Pronoun Analysis

In this part, just for investigation, I wanted to see the distribution of two different types of pronouns: personal and collective (not sure if these are the right terms, so I’ll define them). Personal pronouns, like “I”, “me”, “mine”, “my”, could indicate more self-centered discussions, while collective pronouns like “we”, “us”, “our”, “ours” could indicate more team-based thinking and discussions. However, just a count isn’t really indicative of much, so just take this with a grain of salt. Also, I just limited the list of pronouns to ones that are generally used and what I could find from a list online .

Pronoun Rate per Subject in each Series

Let’s take a look at the pronoun rate in each series

We can see that LeBron makes use of Personal Pronouns at a higher rate than Collective Pronouns. It could mean that he’s asked frequently about his own opinion and insight on some matters, or it could also mean that he prefers speaking about himself. However, his rate of use of collective pronouns is still relatively high at around 30-40%. Among coaches, we can see that Erik Spoelstra speaks significantly more about the team in a collective manner than he talks about himself, while the other three seem relatively equal in rate.

Zooming into the 2016 Series

Since the 2016 Finals is rather interesting to look at because of all the ups and downs in that series, let’s zoom in and see the use of pronouns in each game.

We can see that Tyronn Lue and LeBron often coincide with their use of pronouns. Their use of personal pronouns drops at around the 1/3 to 1/2 mark of the series, which is around the time that the Cavaliers were at their lowest point in terms of series outlook. We could either look at this is an accountability issue, or that they were hoping to motivate the team to make a collective effort. Either way, it eventually worked.

Conclusion and Next Steps

Conclusion

It’s of note that LeBron has generally trended up to be positively consistent in recent years in terms of his sentiment coming in and out of a Finals series. This could be a sign of maturity as he enters his last few years in the league after years of being in the Finals. And despite each era of his career being drastically different from one another in terms of path, coaching, and teammates, he’s been relatively consistent in how he handles himself (at least in front of the media). I could also say the same for his coaches, no matter what their relationship to LeBron and the rest of the team was. It’s also noticeable that, at least in the NBA Finals, topics discussed and words used generally stay within the realm of the game and how it’s played. Sometimes, press conferences revolve around topics that are far and away from what actually transpired in the game (player’s personal life, provocative topics, opinion on pop culture trends). At least, at the highest level, a level of technicality is maintained.

Next Steps

Hopefully this could be developed as an application to study different players, teams, and coaches in how they are asked questions and how they respond. It would be good to see how this is applied in different sports (team and individual), leagues (ex. WNBA vs NBA, EPL vs MLS) and even in a multi-disciplinary way.

 

Submitted by Gabby Herrera-Lim.

gherrer2@nd.edu